


Best Together

by hunters_retreat



Series: A Pretty Enough Story [10]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: M/M, Misunderstandings, Soulmarks, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-01
Updated: 2019-01-01
Packaged: 2019-10-02 00:33:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,721
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17254283
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hunters_retreat/pseuds/hunters_retreat
Summary: “What the hell do you want?” Keith demanded.  He was furious at Shiro suddenly.  He had no idea how the other man felt.





	Best Together

In the end, there was nothing he could do.  The Black Lion had decided to take them on a ride and Keith couldn’t change the giant robot’s mind.  They’d been in Black overnight, flying close enough to Earth to come back at need, but far enough away that no one was going to bother them.  He’d fallen asleep in the pilot’s chair trying to convince Black to let him go back home.  Since he woke, he’d spent the best part of the last three hours on the same mission. 

He felt a touch on his hand and he didn’t look back to see Shiro hover just behind his shoulder, but he took the offered rations instead.  He ate quickly and tried to figure out what to do next.

The problem was, he knew what everyone wanted.  His mother, Pidge, Lance, the rest of the team.  Sam Holt had even come to talk to him about the distance between he and Shiro, but outside of his mother and Pidge, no one knew the truth.  Except Black.  They just saw the distance, not the cause.

And they were right.  The distance was his fault.  He was the one that refused to talk.  He refused to listen to whatever Shiro wanted to say. 

He was allowed that, wasn’t he?

Nothing, not the loss of his father, growing up believing he’d been abandoned by his mother, Shiro’s disappearance and supposed death, even their fight when Shiro had been controlled by the witch, none of that had hurt him as much as the rejection of his soulmate.

Krolia said Shiro was his mate and that he would never love anyone the way he loved Shiro.  Keith hadn’t doubted that, even before he knew that the Galra had mates.  So, what was he supposed to do now?

He ate quickly and tossed his food containers aside and took a long pull from the canteen that Shiro had set up there for him the night before. 

It was too quiet and curiosity got the best of him.  He looked back and saw Shiro with his back to the wall.  He thought for a second that Shiro had decided to take a nap but then he saw the way the Paladin’s hands clenched and unclenched at his side.

“Shiro, what are you doing?”

He didn’t mean to ask but the words were out of his mouth before he could stop them.  Shiro’s eyes opened immediately and he looked back at Keith. 

“Meditating.  I was … trying to get Black to take us home.  My connection to him isn’t as strong as yours but it’s still there.  I thought maybe if we both tried, he’d see this was pointless.”

“Pointless?” Keith felt it hit again, as hard as it had hit when he’d seen Shiro’s soulmark.  “You give up pretty easy.”

He’d watched Shiro fight tooth and nail to get on the Kerberos mission all those years ago, with a tenacity and passion he’d never hoped to inspire.  Good thing.  Apparently fighting for his soulmate meant calling Keith’s name a couple times when they saw one another in a semi-private location and watching him walk away.

“What do you want me to do, Keith?” Shiro demanded.  “I know you feel betrayed.  I know I hurt you.  I’m trying to give you space.  Do you think I actually want that?”

“What the hell do you want?” Keith demanded.  He was furious at Shiro suddenly.  He had no idea how the other man felt.

“I want you to be happy!” Shiro yelled across the bay.  He got to his feet and stared at Keith.  “I had to get my head together and figure out all these damn memories and we were fighting a war and then, by the time I thought I could talk to you about it, you were already with someone else and I bit my tongue because you deserve that!  You deserve to be happy with her and I knew I’d never be able to be able to make you happy.”

“What the hell are you talking about?  Who was I with?  The only relationships, friendship or otherwise, I have ever had have been the Paladins.  You know that!”

“Of course I do!  And I would never have thought the two of you would work out like that, but I’ve seen it and I …,” he watched Shiro’s shoulders slump and his eyes fall to the ground.  Keith had to clench his fists to keep from taking a step closer. 

“Keith, whatever else we are, I always believed we were friends.  You deserve to be happy, and Katie makes you smile.  I wouldn’t ever stand in the way of that.”

“You think I’m dating Pidge?”  Shiro’s eyes jerk up towards his and Keith couldn’t help the laugh that slipped out from between his lips.  “Pidge?”

“You aren’t?”

“She’s my best friend.  She’s been helping me deal with… things.”

“Things?” Shiro asked.

“You.”

“Oh.”

Keith felt suddenly off-balance.  His anger wasn’t gone but it wasn’t … as fierce now.  “Why did you hide it?”

“Keith,” Shiro took a step closer, but stopped himself before he took another step, though the way his body swayed slightly told Keith that he wanted to close the distance.  “I’ve been messed up for so long.  I’m not the person you deserve.  People look at me and they talk about what it must like to have an alien prothesis, but no one thinks about the fact that I am entirely an alien prothesis.  The only thing real about me is my soul.

I have killed to survive and I have died and I was in an alien landscape for years, knowing I would never come back, but holding on because I could still feel you.  And then I came back and it was to this body that I can feel isn’t my own, with memories of things I did, but didn’t do. 

I am so fucking broken and no one deserves that.”

“Shiro,” Keith started to move forward but Shiro took a step back. 

“My father beat my mother, almost to her death, before she would divorce him because he was her soulmate.  She had to deserve it, right, if her soulmate was the one that could hurt her like that?  Keith, how could I be with you, when I could only pull you down into that dark place with me?”

And everything snapped into place, a clear picture of need and intent, of desire and history warring and constantly reshifting between them.

Because their relationship, from day one, have been an ever evolving thing.  They were soulmates who never hoped to find one another.  Keith had never looked because he’d believed that even his soulmate would leave him someday.  He’d believed it better to never find them, than to suffer that loss.  He’d loved Shiro though, from the day they met, in some fashion or other.  Hero worship to friends to so much more over the years. 

But Keith never looked for someone other than Shiro.  He’d been safe, because his love for Shiro was all encompassing and if he loved Shiro, he’d never be left by that very special someone.  There was no way Shiro could love him back.  Shiro had a soulmate and those wounds never healed.

Only, it was all wrong and Adam wasn’t Shiro’s soulmate and Keith’s soulmate would never, ever abandon him. 

And Keith knew that Shiro, in all his doubt, didn’t see the one thing he needed to.   

And as he stepped forward, Keith felt the one thing he’d never though he would. 

“Shiro,” Keith said softly.  “You are the bravest, most loyal, most amazing person I have ever known.  I have always thought that.  You believed in me when I was just some strange kid who stole your car, and you stood by me through all the fights and all the doubts at the Garrison.  You made me believe I could be more than I was.

And when you came back from Kerberos and I followed you to the stars, you had faith in me still.  When the others were afraid of me because I was Galra, you never balked.  At every point in my life, since the day we met, you have been the one positive thought I have had.  The one person who made me think I could be more.

So, don’t stand there and expect me to believe that you could be anything like your father.  You have been beat to hell by things that no one could come out of unscathed, but you’re still here and you’re still a good man.  And maybe, it’s my turn to help you remember who you really are.”

“Keith,” there were tears in his eyes and Keith couldn’t hold himself back any longer.  He crossed the distance between them until he could wrap his arms around Shiro.

He felt Shiro’s return embrace and he felt the soft shudder of his shoulders.  Keith held him through the tears and he blinked away his own.  Because he had something more to say but he needed Shiro to really hear him.

When Shiro pulled back, Keith took his hand and they sat on the floor of the bay and Keith held his hands out between them.  Shiro took them, a questioning look in his eyes.  Keith just needed to hold on to some part of the other man, and from the way Shiro responded to Keith’s gentle hold, he knew Shiro felt the same. 

“I don’t know if what Krolia says about the Galra and their mates is true for me since I’m half human, but I do know that I love you, Shiro.  I have since we met, soulmate or not.  We both come with a lot of issues, so can we just be us for now?  Forget about the marks and the expectations and just be us?”

Shiro let out a shaky breath and nodded.  “Yeah, I can do that.  I … just … I love you, Keith.  And if all we can be is friends, I can be that.  If you want more from me, I’ll do my best to be what you deserve.”

“Just be you.  And I’ll just be me.”

Shiro gave him a real smile then.  “We’ve always been best together.”

Keith smiled back.  “Yeah, I think so too.” 

 

 

 


End file.
